The stabilization funds, and who may spend them

What is in them, at 31 March 2026

Straight from the town’s general ledger: what each account held at the start of FY2026, what has gone into it since, and what has come out. The account numbers are the town’s own.

Two of these are not stabilization funds in the sense Town Meeting means, and they are here because the LEDGER files them here. 8137 opeb is the other-post-employment-benefits trust and 8125 conservation trust is a conservation fund; together they are $2,616,917.16 of the $9,061,421.24 above. Quoting the total as “the stabilization funds” would be taking the accounting system’s filing decision for a statement about what may be spent — so the grouping is printed as the ledger prints it, and said out loud here.

The general/restricted split is ours, read off each fund’s name and account. The ledger prints a balance and never says what may be spent on what.

Where this came from. The town’s own general ledger, obtained by a public records request rather than published on a website. The report names its program, the moment it was generated and the Town Accountant who ran it. We hold it at one remove, so any note the town sent with the figures is not in this archive — and that matters here, because the equivalent package a few months later came with the Town Manager warning that figures were “likely to continue to adjust as we continue the year-end reconciliation process”.

Nothing has come out of any of them so far this year. Every expenditure column is empty at 31 March 2026 — a fact about nine months, not about whether these funds get spent. They do: the Health Insurance fund is a third of a million dollars lighter than the article that created it.

What goes in each year

Town Meeting has voted $4,051,527 into the stabilization funds across 39 articles, FY2012 to FY2025 — and $1,066,000 back out, in 2 articles.

In the 8 years where every article carries a printed amount, the town voted in between $35,000 and $770,350 a year, median $393,387. That is the figure the first question turns on: it is recurring money, it is decided one article at a time at Town Meeting, and it is the same order of magnitude as the gap the schools are projecting.

Two funds take most of it. Special Purpose Stabilization and Stabilization Fund (general) together account for $3,274,080 of the $4,051,527. They are where the first question bites — the rest is sewer housekeeping in amounts too small to close an operating gap.

Every deposit we can price, and the article that made it. A yearly total is a fact about the budget; this is the thing somebody can look up.

FY2025 · annual · article 23 — Inflow/Infiltration, $19,104.40

FY2025 · annual · article 24 — Sewer Reserve Capacity, $5,133.15

FY2024 · annual · article 16 — Sewer Capital Reserve, $35,000.00

FY2023 · annual · article 11 — Special Purpose, $250,000.00

FY2023 · annual · article 10 — Stabilization Fund (general), $100,000.00

FY2023 · annual · article 13 — Opioid Settlement, $84,740.25

FY2023 · annual · article 15 — Sewer Capital Reserve, $36,621.37

FY2023 · special · article 8 — Inflow/Infiltration, $5,340.00

FY2023 · special · article 7 — Sewer Reserve Capacity, $1,851.30

FY2022 · annual · article 10 — Special Purpose, $450,000.00

FY2022 · annual · article 9 — Stabilization Fund (general), $100,000.00

FY2022 · annual · article 13 — Sewer Capital Reserve, $35,548.86

FY2022 · special · article 7 — Inflow/Infiltration, $9,900.00

FY2022 · special · article 6 — Sewer Reserve Capacity, $1,645.60

FY2021 · annual · article 9 — Health Insurance, $369,334.00

FY2021 · annual · article 8 — Special Purpose, $250,000.00

FY2021 · annual · article 7 — Stabilization Fund (general), $100,000.00

FY2021 · special · article 5 — Sewer Capital Reserve, $14,875.50

FY2020 · special · article 6 — Special Purpose, $250,000.00

FY2020 · special · article 5 — Stabilization Fund (general), $212,252.00

FY2020 · annual · article 8 — Stabilization Fund (general), $210,000.00

FY2020 · special · article 11 — Sewer Reserve Capacity, $68,097.59

FY2020 · annual · article 11 — Sewer Capital Reserve, $30,000.00

FY2019 · annual · article 10 — Special Purpose, $200,000.00

FY2019 · annual · article 9 — Stabilization Fund (general), $100,000.00

FY2019 · special · article 2 — Special Purpose, $8,222.00

FY2018 · annual · article 9 — Special Purpose, $200,000.00

FY2018 · special · article 2 — Special Purpose, $199,227.00

FY2018 · annual · article 8 — Stabilization Fund (general), $87,000.00

FY2018 · annual · article 12 — Sewer Capital Reserve, $29,000.00

FY2018 · special · article 5 — Sewer Reserve Capacity, $6,449.63

FY2016 · annual · article 17 — Stabilization Fund (general), $99,851.00

FY2016 · annual · article 21 — Inflow/Infiltration, $14,520.00

FY2016 · annual · article 22 — Sewer Reserve Capacity, $9,667.90

FY2015 · annual · article 16 — Stabilization Fund (general), $98,231.00

FY2015 · special · article 14 — Stabilization Fund (general), $7,136.00

FY2015 · annual · article 21 — Sewer Reserve Capacity, $617.10

FY2014 · annual · article 17 — Stabilization Fund (general), $74,729.00

FY2012 · annual · article 10 — Stabilization Fund (general), $277,432.00

And 7 articles the warrant records without an amount, so they are in none of the figures above:

• FY2025, article 16 — Appropriation to the Stabilization Fund
• FY2025, article 17 — Appropriation to the Special Purpose Stabilization Fund
• FY2022, article 5 — Transfer funds to the Special Purpose Stabilization Fund
• FY2016, article 4 — Create the Town Building Stabilization Fund
• FY2012, article 2 — Appropriate to/from the Stabilization Fund
• FY2011, article 18 — Appropriate to or from the Stabilization Fund
• FY2011, article 2 — Appropriate to or from the Stabilization Fund

How solid is this. Of the 53 articles mentioning a stabilization fund, 39 are deposits, 2 are withdrawals, 7 print no amount (marked understated above), and 5 are sewer enterprise operating budgets that name a fund only in passing — those five total $3,706,189 and counting them as deposits would overstate the money going in by more than the deposits themselves.

What has come back out

$237,391.88 withdrawn, in 8 separate votes the town printed. Every one of these is a clause inside a Town Meeting article about something else — the sewer budget, an omnibus transfer — written in prose rather than set in any table, which is why a page built on the trust tables could not see them.

The words, because a withdrawal read out of prose has to be checkable. These are the printed sentences, with the page they are on:

• FY2024, Health Insurance, $105,762.48 — page 140 of that year’s annual report: > …Turf Revolving Fund, transfer $27,929.97 from the PEG Access and Cable Related Enterprise Fund, transfer $105,762.48 from the Health Insurance Stabilization Account, transfer $100,000 from 140
• FY2023, Sewer Capital Reserve, $35,000.00 — page 169 of that year’s annual report: > …transfer from the Inflow/Infiltration Stabilization Fund the sum of $9,900.00; transfer from the Sewer Capital Reserve Stabilization Fund the sum of $35,000.00; transfer from the Sewer Reserve Capacity Stabilization Fund the sum of $20,962.40; and appropriate from Sewer Enterprise retained earnings the sum of $382,096.70 for a total appropriation of $1,339,850.95 to operate the Sewer…
• FY2023, Sewer Reserve Capacity, $20,962.40 — page 169 of that year’s annual report: > …transfer from the Sewer Capital Reserve Stabilization Fund the sum of $35,000.00; transfer from the Sewer Reserve Capacity Stabilization Fund the sum of $20,962.40; and appropriate from Sewer Enterprise retained earnings the sum of $382,096.70 for a total appropriation of $1,339,850.95 to operate the Sewer Enterprise Fund for F Y24; and further that $740,368.15 be included in…
• FY2023, Inflow/Infiltration, $9,900.00 — page 169 of that year’s annual report: > …VOTED (72 YES, 8 NO) to appropriate from Sewer Enterprise revenues the sum of $89,891.85; transfer from the Inflow/Infiltration Stabilization Fund the sum of $9,900.00; transfer from the Sewer Capital Reserve Stabilization Fund the sum of $35,000.00; transfer from the Sewer Reserve Capacity Stabilization Fund the sum of $20,962.40; and appropriate from Sewer Enterprise retained earnings the sum…
• FY2022, Sewer Capital Reserve, $20,962.00 — page 75 of that year’s annual report: > …for FY23, $853,112.53 was appropriated from Sewer Enterprise revenues, $20,000.00 transferred from the Sewer Capital Reserve Stabilization Fund, $20,962.00 was transferred from the Sewer Reserve Capacity Fund and the sum of $319,107.47 was appropriated from Retained Earnings for a total appropriation of $1,213,182.00 to operate the Sewer Enterprise Fund for FY23, including the amount of…
• FY2021, Sewer Capital Reserve, $20,000.00 — page 144 of that year’s annual report: > …UNANIMOUS CONSENT to appropriate from Sewer Enterprise revenues the sum of $831,406.99; transfer from the Sewer Capital Reserve Stabilization Fund the sum of $20,000.00; transfer from the Sewer Reserve Capacity Fund the sum of $20,965.40; and appropriate from Sewer Enterprise Retained Earnings the sum of $301,113.71; for a total appropriation of $1,173,486.10 to operate the Sewer Enterprise…
• FY2017, Inflow/Infiltration, $14,520.00 — page 158 of that year’s annual report: > …transfer from the Sewer Reserve Capacity Stabilization Fund the sum of $10,285.00; transfer from the Sewer Inflow/Infiltration Stabilization Fund the sum of $14,520.00; and appropriate from Sewer Enterprise retained earnings the sum of $160,276.94; for a total appropriation of $745,251.00 to operate the Sewer Enterprise Fund for FY18; and further that $911,971.24 be included in…
• FY2017, Sewer Reserve Capacity, $10,285.00 — page 158 of that year’s annual report: > …2/3rds DECLARED to appropriate from Sewer Enterprise revenues the sum of $560,169.06; transfer from the Sewer Reserve Capacity Stabilization Fund the sum of $10,285.00; transfer from the Sewer Inflow/Infiltration Stabilization Fund the sum of $14,520.00; and appropriate from Sewer Enterprise retained earnings the sum of $160,276.94; for a total appropriation of $745,251.00 to operate the…

And 4 articles this page will not add up, because the printing does not let it. They are here rather than dropped:

• FY2018, Sewer Reserve Capacity, $6,449.63 — this is money going IN, matched by a pattern that cannot tell direction from wording alone
• FY2022, Sewer Capital Reserve, $20,000.00 — the same transaction appears in two consecutive reports, because each year’s warrant recites the year before
• FY2023, Sewer Reserve Capacity, $382,096.70 — the figure covers this fund AND another, and the article does not split it
• FY2023, Sewer Capital Reserve, $20,962.40 — the same transaction appears in two consecutive reports, because each year’s warrant recites the year before

What this is not. A complete account of what left these funds. It is what the annual reports PRINT, found by reading their article text; the ledger’s own expenditure column would settle it and this archive holds one year of that.

Each fund, year by year

Each figure below is its own reading, and they come from four places: the trust tables in the annual reports, checked against each page’s own arithmetic; the per-account Trust Fund Balance Detail listing those reports print from FY2024; the Treasurer’s Cash page, which every report prints and which is the only one of the four carrying the general Stabilization Fund; and the town’s general ledger. Every figure covered by more than one of them has agreed to the cent.

One of the four has a different grain. The Treasurer’s Cash page counts cash held by a custodian, not a fund balance — the Opioid fund shows $233,317.54 of cash at Bartholomew where the ledger puts the fund at $241,421.18. For the funds charted here the two have matched wherever both exist, because those funds sit whole in one place, but that is a fact about them and not a rule. It fills years nothing else reaches and never overrides a balance.

• Stabilization — FY2011 $1,186,776.91, FY2012 $989,608.54, FY2013 $999,548.94, FY2014 $1,299,077.98, FY2015 $1,388,105.33, FY2016 $1,511,526.92, FY2017 $1,631,430.63, FY2018 $1,740,279.81, FY2019 $1,848,802.86, FY2020 $1,978,347.74, FY2021 $2,447,755.21, FY2022 $2,574,673.21, FY2023 $2,730,600.73, FY2024 $2,901,157.60, FY2025 $3,147,178.96
• Zoning Incentive Stabilization — FY2014 $227,201.90, FY2015 $227,542.95, FY2016 $227,884.96, FY2017 $228,320.36, FY2018 $228,891.82, FY2019 $229,464.69, FY2020 $230,431.40, FY2020 $230,431.40, FY2021 $230,748.05, FY2022 $231,007.68, FY2023 $235,681.11, FY2024 $243,063.42, FY2025 $249,060.25
• Vehicle/Equipment Stabilization — FY2018 $236,302.39, FY2019 $643,788.80, FY2020 $945,669.29, FY2020 $945,669.29, FY2021 $1,201,170.65, FY2022 $1,457,123.63, FY2023 $1,936,143.89, FY2024 $2,254,933.99, FY2025 $2,598,621.38

Every proven row:

Nine funds, fifteen years, and most of the grid is empty. Only 3 of the 9 funds have any history at all; the other 6 are known from one reading, the ledger’s. Across FY2011 to FY2025 that is about 43 of 135 possible fund-years.

41 of those readings are proved, across 15 years — and that is a limit of OUR reading, not of the town’s record. The annual reports print the whole trust and stabilization table every year, every fund, and roughly ten times as many fund rows are visible in our scans of them as this page publishes. A row appears here only where the page’s own arithmetic closes on it, because publishing one that does not would be worse than publishing nothing — so the empty cells are a queue of work, not an absence of evidence.

Two things would empty that queue, and they are not alternatives. A better reader gets the figures the town has already printed. The MUNIS trust report for earlier years would get them from the accounting system instead, with revenue and expenditure beside every balance — which the annual report tables do not carry at all.

What each one is FOR, in the town’s own words

A special purpose fund is restricted to the purpose it was created for, and that purpose lives in the article that created it — not in the fund’s name. These are the creating votes this archive holds, each quoting M.G.L. c.40 §5B, the statute that lets a town keep a stabilization fund at all.

This archive holds a creating vote for 5 of the 9 funds that appear in the Town Meeting record, and not for Sewer Capital Reserve Stabilization, Special Purpose Stabilization, Stabilization Fund (general), Vehicle/Equipment Stabilization. The record here begins at FY2011 and those funds are older than it, so the article that created them — and the purpose that restricts them — is in a warrant nobody here has read. For a restricted fund that is the load-bearing document: without it, what the money may lawfully be spent on rests on the fund’s NAME, which is a reading and not a rule.

Create and fund a Reserve Capacity Stabilization Fund from sewer retained earnings — FY2015 annual Town Meeting, article 21, passed.

VOTED UNANIMOUSLY, pursuant to General Laws Chapter 40, Section 5B, to create a Reserve Capacity Stabilization Fund and further to transfer from Sewer Enterprise Retained Earnings, the sum of $617.10 into the Reserve Capacity Stabilization Fund.

Create an Inflow/Infiltration Stabilization Fund and fund it — FY2016 annual Town Meeting, article 21, passed.

VOTED UNANIMOUSLY to create an Inflow/Infiltration Stabilization Fund and further to transfer from Sewer Enterprise Retained Earnings the sum of $14,520 into the Inflow/ Infiltration Stabilization Fund.

Create the Town Building Stabilization Fund — FY2016 special Town Meeting, article 4, amended and passed.

VOTED UNANIMOUSLY with M.G.L. reference changed to Chapter 40 § 5B.

Create and fund a Health Insurance Stabilization Fund — FY2021 annual Town Meeting, article 9, passed.

VOTED UNANIMOUSLY to create a Health Insurance Stabilization Fund pursuant to General Laws Chapter 40 Section 5B and further, to vote to raise and appropriate the sum of $369,334. to deposit into the Health Insurance Stabilization Fund.

Create the Opioid Settlement Stabilization Fund and deposit settlement proceeds — FY2023 annual Town Meeting, article 13, passed.

VOTED (80 YES, 11 NO), pursuant to the provisions of G.L. c.40, Section 5B, to create a new special purpose stabilization fund, to be known as the Opioid Settlement Stabilization Fund, for dedication, without further appropriation, of 100% of opioid litigation settlement

Two of the three largest funds have no creating article here, and the third turns out to have one under another name. The general Stabilization Fund and Zoning Incentive were both in use before FY2011, which is as far back as the town-meeting record in this archive reaches, so their purposes are known only from their names — and a name is not an article.

Vehicle/Equipment is different, and the report said otherwise until now. Its name appears in no annual report before FY2018 and in every one after. Meanwhile Special Purpose Stabilization appears in the Town Meeting articles and never once on a Treasurer’s Cash page, in the MUNIS ledger or in a trust table; Vehicle/Equipment never appears in an article. Each name lives in exactly one kind of document, and the FY2018 article says what the fund is for: “to this Special Purpose Stabilization Fund for the purpose of funding future capital needs for vehicles and equipment.” The balances agree too — FY2018’s two articles total $399,227 and the fund rises $407,486 that year, leaving about $8,259 of interest.

That they are one fund is our reading of the evidence, not a statement either document makes. What the evidence does settle is the negative: nothing here supports Vehicle/Equipment having been created before FY2011.

Each fund, meeting by meeting

Every Town Meeting article this archive holds that touches a stabilization fund — what was asked, what was voted, and what the Finance Committee recommended. The record reaches back to FY2011 and no further, which is why three funds have no creation here.

Which fund an article belongs to is OUR reading. The votes name funds in prose and carry no account number, so an article saying only “the Stabilization Fund” is taken as the general one — which is what the town means by it, and is still a reading.

Stabilization Fund (general)

17 articles, FY2011 to FY2025.

Sewer Reserve Capacity Stabilization

9 articles, FY2015 to FY2025.

Special Purpose Stabilization

9 articles, FY2018 to FY2025.

Sewer Capital Reserve Stabilization

8 articles, FY2018 to FY2024.

Inflow/Infiltration Stabilization

4 articles, FY2016 to FY2025.

Vehicle/Equipment Stabilization

2 articles, FY2018 to FY2019.

Opioid Settlement Stabilization

2 articles, FY2023 to FY2023.

Town Building Stabilization

1 article, FY2016 to FY2016.

Health Insurance Stabilization

1 article, FY2021 to FY2021.

What this cannot answer yet, and why

Four of the six questions this report was asked are about MOVEMENT, and the series does not exist in a form anything may aggregate:

report_trust_funds holds 642 rows for FY2011–FY2025. Twelve are reconciled to a total the document itself prints. The balances above are no check: extracted, never tied to the page’s own total. Every page was surveyed before anyone tried — ten of seventeen years need real PDF geometry rather than text, because of mirrored layouts, rows offset from their own names, and column counts that change between years.

That is registered as a gap rather than left here: see the extraction rows in sources/data/money-gaps.csv, published at /what-we-cannot-answer. The work to close it is notes/plans/STABILIZATION-FUNDS.md.

What this does not show

• That the balances are right. They are unreconciled. A figure here is a place to look in the annual report, not a figure to quote at a meeting.

• That the restricted funds are unavailable for ever. Town Meeting created each one and can, in principle, act on them again. What it cannot do is spend a special purpose fund on something else while it stands.

• That spending a reserve solves anything. It is one-time money against a recurring cost — the same shape as the September Town Meeting appropriation that left $392,264 of salary in the following year with nothing behind it.

• Why any balance is the size it is. A balance is a fact; a reason is a hypothesis.

Sources